And just to put it another way...
@jakemiller We’ve officially gone batshit crazy 😂🦇 Quarantune ##8: “Don’t Eat The Bat” ##foryou ##foryourpage ##fyp ##foryoupage ##corona ##coronavirus ##happyathome
♬ Dont Eat The Bat - jakemiller
April 11, 2020
"It's not racist to point out that eating bats is batshit crazy."
Says Bill Maher:
And just to put it another way...
And just to put it another way...
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Have you been to SF Chinatown lately? They got all sorts of BBQ rodents/animals/fowl creatures hanging in the window.
No, I haven't eaten a bat. But is it that much worse than eating a duck?
If the virus 🦠 came out of the hills of Eastern Kentucky, is there any doubt the press would be calling it the Kentucky Fried Virus? Like, one ounce of doubt? 🍗
Watch the whole thing.
Maher is 100% right on.
Why just the other day, Bloomberg "news" (or Hillary -Drudge news or Maddow news) were signing the joys of the wet markets re-opening, in an op-ed.
They called it the lovely produce market.
Chi-com BS - happily spread by Bloomie. The rich little asshole who wants to run Hillary as his VP.
To be clear, I'm not defending the ChiComs - I'm defending the bats!
Are we all going to just pretend there isn't a statue of Chairman Mao in Bill Maher's backyard?
Bill Maher would be better off commenting it's time to stop swallowing the Marxist bullshit. It already has killed more people than any virus so far todate.
Maher is schizo. One day he makes perfect sense, and can even be brave with his opinions, and the next he's making shit up, or buying into the latest bullshit from the left. I wonder if he ever watches his own stuff. If he did, he'd probably call himself out.
Eating bats has nothing to do with the coronavirus. That’s cover for a bio attack. Look at the timeline and what was happening in our relationship with China.
Racist has a connotation way out of line with the denotation these days.
Lots of benign things are literally racist.
Instead of claiming it's not racist, double down on the position.
I saw a great Photoshop yesterday on Facebook. It was a soup can that said, "Campbell's Cream of Bat Soup."
The sun came out - time for a bike ride. The daily bike commute redirected into a large rural circuit instead of to a store full of bat germs with nothing you want to buy on the shelves.
We may never fully find out what happened with the genesis of this virus. A Chinese Bio-lab near a filthy wet market where they slaughter and kill any creature they can shove into a filthy cage. The bio-lab probably does the same thing!
His point here is that proggy dems cannot focus on what matters, because they are conditioned to focus on what doesn't matter.
The world could be ending, and the collective left would be yammering on and whining about racism.
I don't know how you make a bat sound like a tasty option, but I know that potatoes have eyes, and bats hardly do, so it's hard to decide what is moral to eat.
Bay Area Guy,
(Bay Area Gal, here...Oaktown, yay!).
Bats are viral vectors; ducks, not so much. While avian flu can and does spread to humans, as do viruses from pigs, these two animals are nowhere near as dangerous as bats. Furthermore, we have surveillance mechanisms in place for avian and swine flu—often resulting in the loss of millions of animals. No such surveillance exists for bats in China and other Asian countries (nor for the other weird animals they eat).
I wish Maher would make explicit the point behind his point: Not all cultures are equal.
I would never click on a Bill Maher video.
For some reason I did.
It is the most common sense I've heard in America for 3 1/2 years.
Thanks, Bill Maher.
Wow. An entire monologue without a single slam on Trump. You don't see that every day. I guess the reason why Maher is allowed to get away with observing politically incorrect obvious truths is because he's so over the top when it comes to Trump and Republicans.....Years ago, when sushi first arrived on these shores, I remember how unsophisticated Americans, such as myself, were grossed out by the whole concept of eating raw fish. I still am, but I'm the minority....I used to eat in Chinatown with some friends. There was always someone who would order chicken feet in order to demonstrate their open and adventurous nature......Chinese food is terrific, but they certainly have their blind spots.
Tom said...
If the virus 🦠 came out of the hills of Eastern Kentucky, is there any doubt the press would be calling it the Kentucky Fried Virus? Like, one ounce of doubt? 🍗
maybe, but i think "hillbilly virus", or "yokel virus" would be in the running
actually; IF (capital I, F) IF, they had an ounce of thought (assumes facts not in evidence),
They'd call it the "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive" Virus
The Hot Pockets gibe seemed gratuitous.
"wet markets" are blamed too much. Any change to eliminate them would raise
food cost and reduce availability for poor people.
"Wet market" sounds like something in the sex trades.
Bagoh20: we should ever let ourselves forget that TV talking heads are selling a particular product. Every now and then, the slip out of character, but there it is. One of my friends interviewed Paul Ruebens (Pee Wee Herman) in the early 80s when he wrote for the Harvard Crimson. Ruebens wouldn't break character. I imagine that life gets tedious.
when Bill Maher is the voice of reason...
Would we recognize the next Hitler, the next Nazi Germany, if it arose?
In the 30's, Many leaders admired how Hitler had brought so many Germans out of poverty.
Many admired and even envied Hitler's strong hand. "He made the trains run on time."
They ignored the civil rights abuses and the single party, ruthless, totalitarian governing.
They ignored the brutal suppression of human and civil rights and the creation of a powerful secret police.
They choose not to believe or they didn't care about the mass incarceration and destruction of an unpopular religious and ethnic minority.
They ignored the military build up.
They ignored Hitler's ambitious talk about expansion.
Any of that sound familiar?
Bagoh - Hot Pockets... Wet Markets.... It's a conspiracy to trixx us!
I'm fairly certain if Americans, who generally don't eat pets or exotic things, would be horrified, and not turned on, at the cruel horror show that is an equivalent of a violent and bloody farmer's market. Never mind the crammed filthy cages...
google it. if you dare. It's freaking hard to watch.
I agree with Maher. Every bit of it.
PB,
While wet markets may serve as a source of nutrition for the poor in China, that doesn’t mean they should not be shut down. Perhaps Chinese leadership should take responsibility for the fact that they cannot feed their populace.
In addition, the wet markets thrive because of “traditional” medicine. Which is a stupid, dangerous phrase. It is traditional, but not medicine. This is where the enlightened Chinese of all classes go to get their rhino horn and tiger testicles. The government props them up because they are proud of their so-called medicine—and see it as a source of nationalistic pride.
How stupid that people here in the US want insurance to pay for this asinine practice. Asinine and dangerous—to people and to the endangered species who provide the body parts. But hey! The party of Science.
I really liked Maher's comments; and I really really liked the absence of his audience.
The Daily Beast is already slamming Maher for his observations. The article claims that his remarks will cause an increase in anti-Asian bigotry.....Here in NYC there have been several incidents of such bigotry. The perps didn't look like typical Maher fans or Trump voters.
There are reasons western civ. is superior. Not eating bats is one of them.
Since his move to HBO, Bill Maher has become a much more conventional Hollywood liberal type. But he stills retains much of the anti-PC attitude that defined his original show. He has long been an advocate of the obvious notion that some cultures are superior to others, originally in reference to Islamic cultures. And of course his leftist detractors called him a bigot for that, as well. It is not unsurprising that a lot of old left would agree with Maher about Islam and about China. But with the new social justice infused left, they are somehow afforded a level of protection for belonging to official minority groups. Ironically, they are only minorities in our society. On a global scales, whites are the racial minority.
" Ruebens wouldn't break character. I imagine that life gets tedious. "
He must have dropped that somewhere along the years. Just heard him on Gilbert Gottfried's podcast. He didn't slip into the Peewee persona once.
Maher seems to be consistent in thinking for himself because sometimes he does go against liberal groupthink. Doesn't mean he's always right, but it's a step in the right direction.
But remember, it is Donald Trump who is the narrow minded bigot!
I've never eaten a bat. I wouldn't go out of my way to eat a bat. But, if I was offered a bat prepared in Hubei style, I would not automatically decline. Maybe it is delicious? What would it taste like? Well, bats are insectivores, or fructovores. They are also very active, so my guess would be that they are lean. So... maybe like a lean cut of possum? It will all depend on the preparation. Will it be carefully done with accompanying ingredients that compliment the bat? Will it be served artfully?
The reason I really dislike this cheap, parochial chauvinism is that the problem isn't that the Chinese were eating bats, or cats, or dogs, or pangolins per se. It is that they were buying and selling them in grossly unsanitary markets that seemed design d to encourage the transmission of disease between species.
In a world where Cazjer Mazu, Balut and Lutefisk are regional delicacies, making fun of another culture's cuisine seems petty.
@Bob Boyd:
Any of that sound familiar?
The claim about trains running on time was made about Mussolini, not Hitler. But for the love of god, can we please dispense with the incessant references to Hitler/Nazi Germany. For one, this kind of historical analogizing often doesn't help answer the relevant questions of the day. But if we do insist on making such historical comparisons, Germany under Wilhelm II is probably more apt than Germany under the Nazis.
So now that I got one of the Saints from the Progressive movement provided me permission I'll be ordering "Kung Pao" again and not feel that I'm racist.
I don't know if eating bats is good, bad, or neutral. I don't know if it was the source of the present pandemic- no one really does. Wet markets would shock most people, though, but then I grew up with a grandfather that raised and slaughtered his own chickens every year, and I helped in the entire process- it isn't for the faint of heart.
In a world where Cazjer Mazu, Balut and Lutefisk are regional delicacies, making fun of another culture's cuisine seems petty.
As a (half) Norwegian, I can make fun of lutefisk because it is something truly horrible.
Non-Norwegians are prohibited from pointing out the craziness of eating lutefisk.
The Chinese military biolab is 30 km from the Wuhan market. The civilian virus research lab is 30 meters away. Workers at the later were said to sneak out lab animals to sell at the Wuhan market to pad their income. The wet market may have helped it spread, but I don't think it was the cause.
@ J. Farmer
I don't think I've been making incessant references to Hitler/Nazi Germany.
But if we do insist on making such historical comparisons, Germany under Wilhelm II is probably more apt than Germany under the Nazis.
Go ahead.
I am not making fun of another culture. I am saying that their eating habits (and food preparation habits) are dangerous. It is not provincial chauvinism to point out that eating an animal known to harbor dangerous viruses that can spread to humans is an unwise thing to do.
Eating lutefisk is idiotic. Not because eating fish is dangerous, but because lutefisk tastes terrible.
There's the case of oysters. There's a point to being adventurous in trying out new foods. Still, the science is settled. Eating bats is a bad thing. That's probably true even if they're kept in sanitary and humane conditions.
Here’s a hypothetical: What would we say if people in the Great Plains states began eating prairie dogs? Prairie dogs can carry the plague. I think that we would rightly try to STRONGLY discourage prairie dog casserole...and probably make it illegal.
Michael K said...
I saw a great Photoshop yesterday on Facebook. It was a soup can that said, "Campbell's Cream of Bat Soup."
I heard its to die for.
There is zero reason to believe all cultures are equally moral. It's not anything anyone really believes. All you have to do is find the one that offends you enough to be honest about it. Those defending wet markets by calling critics bigots would have no problem calling the culture in red American states immoral.
Michael K said...
I saw a great Photoshop yesterday on Facebook. It was a soup can that said, "Campbell's Cream of Bat Soup."
I heard its to die for.
@Bob Boyd:
I don't think I've been making incessant references to Hitler/Nazi Germany.
My apologies; I did not mean to imply that you were the one making "incessant references." I meant to point out that "incessant references to Hitler/Nazi Germany" are too common a feature of modern political discourse. On the left, such allusions are typically made about domestic political opponents (e.g. Bush is a Nazi, Trump is Nazi, etc.). On the right, the allusions are typically reserved for foreign opponents (i.e. it's 1939, someone is Hitler, someone is Chamberlain, someone is Churchill, etc.). In both cases, I think these references obscure more than they illuminate.
Go ahead.
No thanks. As I said, I am generally not a fan of that kind of historical analogizing.
Bats harbor all kinds of diseases that can and have been transmitted to humans. More so than pigs or ducks. It is sensible to ban eating bats. Not hard. Nor racist.
“We may never fully find out what happened with the genesis of this virus. A Chinese Bio-lab near a filthy wet market where they slaughter and kill any creature they can shove into a filthy cage. The bio-lab probably does the same thing!”
I don’t for a minute that one of the ChiCom researchers working at one of the two virology labs in Wuhan woke up one morning and announced to himself that today he was going to intentionally infect fellow citizens in order to start a worldwide pandemic in order to cement Han Chinese supremacy. Or anything like that. I am 99% certain that negligence was involved, probably even gross negligence.
It very much appears, from the evidence so far, that Chinese researchers were working with SARS like coronaviruses at probably both virology labs in Wuhan. Bats were involved, because it is primarily a bat hosted coronavirus. But did it escape from a bat, a pangolin, a civet (the three know animal hosts so far) or some other animal species, such as ferrets, that have comparable ACE2 receptors to ours? We don’t know.
I have suggested before that while the Japanese are known to be meticulous, one adjective used with the Chinese is “slapdash”, which is a form of careless. When I suggested to someone who knows, by his work, much more than most of us about threats to this country, that the virus may have entered the human population as a result of someone at one of the labs selling lab animals, that were supposed to have incinerated at the nearby market. He responded that that sounded like the Chinese, which suggests to me that that possibility has at least been entertained by our intelligence types. On the other hand, one of the more famous Chinese bat coronavirus researchers has been known to have had bats shitting on his head while in their caves. Which again could cause the virus to jump species. The Chinese are just sloppy, and I think that that sloppiness, in observing biosafety protocols, is very likely how the virus entered the human species.
Of course they are also not telling us what they were doing in their virology lab, when this virus escaped. I don’t think that they were gene editing, but find the theory of forced evolution more plausible. And that is where a host such as ferrets comes in, that have comparable ACE2 receptors. The evidence so far is that the virus crossed into the human population ACE2 ready, which wouldn’t have been the case if the strain had been developed In a traditional host such as bats. Were they working on a bio weapon? People I know who have worked In that area suggest not. Doesn’t apparently look right, or something. One theory is that they were attempting to discover a generic SARS-like coronavirus vaccine or maybe a vaccine delivery mechanism.
@ J. Farmer
I can't do anything dispensing with Hitler references as a common a feature of modern political discourse. I just don't have that kind of stroke. I know what you mean though.
You're right about Mussolini and the trains, but so many people have made the same mistake for so many years that "Hitler made the trains run on time" has practically become a legitimate usage...that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
No thanks. As I said, I am generally not a fan of that kind of historical analogizing.
Oh come on. I'd genuinely like to hear what you were thinking about that.
Anyway, I think my larger point, that China is a big fricking problem in the making, is valid. And we're not only ignoring that, we're contributing to it. China was supposed to become more like the west. The west is becoming more like China, aren't they?
Would we recognize the next Hitler
Sure, by the mustache.
Hi Anne (Bay Area Gal),
"Bats are viral vectors; ducks, not so much. While avian flu can and does spread to humans, as do viruses from pigs, these two animals are nowhere near as dangerous as bats."
You have thoroughly convinced me to never, ever, ever eat a bat from a Chinese market in SF.
You been on BART lately? It's mostly deserted, except for the brave few. I just drive around the empty streets and park for free.
Holy interspecies transmission, Batman!
Would we recognize the next Hitler
Sure, by the mustache.
Fuck, I forgot about the mustache.
Anne said ... Eating lutefisk is idiotic. Not because eating fish is dangerous, but because lutefisk tastes terrible.
It is dangerous because it was traditionally preserved in lye. You need to soak it in water in order to get the lye out. Otherwise ...
Norwegians hate the taste of lutefisk, but tend to be very accommodating and "nice". They follow stupid traditions so as not to rock the boat.
I am half Scots. That may explain why I am so different from my Norwegian relatives. It's that William Wallace thing, I suspect.
The really daring thing would have been to talk about the virus escaping from a lab.
True, the idea that the virus was deliberately released would be even more daring, but also batshit crazy.
I don't know why anybody bothers about Maher. When he went pay cable he fell into a black hole for me along with Chelsea Handler. Is any thing he says really that interesting or original or valuable? Maybe Maher was twitter before there was twitter: always ready with some short, punchy quote - often outrageous -that provided fodder for social media.
@ Farmer
If you don't tell me your China is like Wilhelm II theory, I'm going to think you never had one and you just said that to sound smart.
In a spectrum between Charlemagne and Hitler, I think Napoleon would probably fall more to the Hitler side of the spectrum. However, Hitler did not exist in the nineteenth century which is why historians of that era never compared him to Hitler.....In a spectrum between Charlemagne and Genghis Khan, Napoleon would probably fall closer to the Charlemagne side. Maybe that's why Napoleon looked good back then.
Non-Norwegians are prohibited from pointing out the craziness of eating lutefisk.
True story. One of the upper Midwest railroads (Great Northern? Milwaukee Road?) mis-routed a boxcar full of lutefisk, and it sat on a siding for weeks. The eventual recipient put in a claim for a boxcar load of spoiled lutefisk. The railroad eventually paid up, but they balked at first, demanding to know how in Hell anyone could determine the difference between regular lutefisk and spoiled lutefisk.
@Bob Boyd:
If you don't tell me your China is like Wilhelm II theory, I'm going to think you never had one and you just said that to sound smart.
That sounds like some kind of threat. Oh no, someone on the Internet may have a negative opinion of me. Clutch my pearls!
My only point was that China is a rising power, and that phenomenon poses a serious challenge to established power. The question of how to handle a rising Germany was significant one for the European powers. The question of Germany in the 1930s was a much different one.
Some people think the auteur of pizza man and bit player of amazon women on the moon has aomething clever to say, he doesnt.
If the virus �� came out of the hills of Eastern Kentucky, is there any doubt the press would be calling it the Kentucky Fried Virus? Like, one ounce of doubt? ��
@Tom, not true! They’d find a way to name it in order to associate the virus with Mitch McConnell.
The reason I really dislike this cheap, parochial chauvinism is that the problem isn't that the Chinese were eating bats, or cats, or dogs, or pangolins per se. It is that they were buying and selling them in grossly unsanitary markets that seemed design d to encourage the transmission of disease between species.
People used to quip about "the Chinese will eat anything," but when one realizes how many famines China went through in the 20th century alone and how many millions perished, one wonders at how sad and desperate the long term effects on eating habits are for scrounging for whatever will feed you.
rhhardin; "...a store full of bat germs with nothing you want to buy on the shelves."
I feel your pain, brother.
I was at the supermarket [stifles laugh] today too. At the rate we're going, stir-fried bats will be looking pretty good by the end of the summer. Hey, if you put enough soy sauce and wasabi on them, they taste like soy sauce and wasabi. (I do draw the line at bat sashimi-style.)
Hint: If you can't find fresh radishes and salad at your friendly local, try your Walmart instead. Demographics may work in your favor in this situation. They had the whole milk ricotta and mozzarella too, so I'll be able to refresh our stuffed shells supply next week.
Also a good place to pick up a few Bic lighters in the checkout lane, if you're into that.
Seriously, I don't think any knowledgeable person believes that this virus is, or can be, orally transmitted (correct me if I'm wrong).
However, "wet markets", with their motley collection of more-or-less live animals, many of them wild, which would normally never meet each other, are a great place for viruses to spread through the air, meet old friends, share tricks they've learned, and generally kick up their usual rapid rate of evolution into overdrive. With all those half-starved, dirty humans around, who could resist it?
It's not the bats. It's the culture.
That said, I'm not eating no bats. Not with all these squirrels and deer around here. A few methylmercury-laden fish from the local lakes should kill off anything they're carrying (hopefully before me).
Good old David Chandler had to distinguish Napoleon from Hitler way back in the intro to his big 1966 CON--"nothing could be more degrading to the former and more flattering to the latter."
I won't rehearse all his points, but in the main I think he's right. The resemblances are superficial, the differences are bone deep.
Historical analogies are as inevitable in these discussions as whatiffery, and about as slippery. And I'm hungry.
Narr
L8ter H8ters ;-)
There's a large body of opinion to the effect that it's crazy to eat pork, or shellfish.
"Ken B said...
I agree with Maher. Every bit of it."
So mom is good with it too. Noted.
Oh no, someone on the Internet may have a negative opinion of me.
No way, Farmer. Not me.
You're a crazy mixed up kid, but I like you.
No way, Farmer. Not me.
You're a crazy mixed up kid, but I like you.
Well, that's a relief. I remember back during George W. Bush's first term when I was screaming about his foreign policy and trade deals. Thank god nobody listened to a crazy mixed up kid like me :-P
J. Farmer said, speaking to Bob Boyd, "My apologies; I did not mean to imply that you were the one making "incessant references." I meant to point out that "incessant references to Hitler/Nazi Germany" are too common a feature of modern political discourse. On the left, such allusions are typically made about domestic political opponents (e.g. Bush is a Nazi, Trump is Nazi, etc.). On the right, the allusions are typically reserved for foreign opponents (i.e. it's 1939, someone is Hitler, someone is Chamberlain, someone is Churchill, etc.). In both cases, I think these references obscure more than they illuminate."
I try not to make incessant references to Nazi Germany, but that doesn't mean it isn't in my thinking.
Unlike I guess most people I don't think Nazi Germany is about Hitler. Instead I think Hitler was elected because he said things that appealed to what I think of as the Nazi hive mind and I think the Nazi hive mind is a more or less permanent feature of human existence in that there are always a substantial number of people that find this way of thinking appealing.
Further one of the most salient things one can say about the Nazi hive mind, is that we can define it not by a particular political position but by how people arrive at that position. People get there by subordinating themselves to the group and conforming to the group mind.
We all have this tendency more or less, but some are pretty good at resisting it, while others just seem incapable of not going along with the group mind.
Thus although I think there are a lot of interesting things one could say about Nazi Germany, one of the more crucial observations is that over 90%, probably more like 95%, of young Germans supported the National Socialists prior to 1932, ie. before the Nazis were first elected.
And understanding that is important. Because I just don't believe that 95% of young Germans were really using their own judgement or applying their own ethics in supporting the Nazis. If that was really true, then we, the human species, are doomed.
It was the group mind that did this. And this is a dramatic illustration of the pitfalls of group thinking. And it's not really like this is in past. No the hive mind is very much present and has been all along.
His interview with de Blasio not a high point. You could tell from his expression that he knew the mayor was a big part of the problem but he let him off easy.
The mayor sounded like trump “it was a new disease. How could we know”. That’s sort of the idea. The new diseases are the ones that we need to prepare for ... go into overdrive the moment we heard what was happening in Wuhan
Would we recognize the next Hitler
Sure, by the mustache.
Fuck, I forgot about the mustache.
Did anyone ever mistake Groucho for Adolf? Maybe if Adolf had had some of Groucho's sense of humor and wit things would have been a bit different.
in a similar way to putin, in Russia, the established parties had discredited themselves in the post creditanstalt period, that's where the depression became Great, the Catholic Center Party was disgraced by Bruening's term, the Socialists had collapsed Stalin's social fascist had a little to do with it, so who was the viable alternative to Hitler, in that interval,
It wasn't the wet markets
Buckwheathikes said...
"Are we all going to just pretend there isn't a statue of Chairman Mao in Bill Maher's backyard?"
Thank you. I thought i was the only one to notice this.
@mandrewa: Why is the hive mind uniquely associated with Nazi Germany? Why not the hive mind in Bolshevik Russia or Red Guard China? The left have a good record when it comes to Nazi Germany, but their record with other totalitarian states is not so good. The Germany Communist Party were opposed to Hitler. After the war, they got to create the worker's paradise. It wasn't as bad as Hitler, but, for all that, maybe the Germans had good reason to distance themselves from the German Marxists. The Marxists have their own hive mind. So do writers who wish to ignore this obvious fact....I'm not sure if your statistics about young Germans are correct. I remember from the Shirer book that Hitler called for large public demonstrations to support one of his war declarations and that the majority of Germans stayed home.
to wit, remember Marcuse, adorno et al, of the Frankfurt school, having failed in bringing about the revolution in germany, made it into the oss, during the war that was certainly true of Marcuse, adorno was the popularizer of the authoritarian personality meme, that was popularized by hofstadler in the 50s and 60s, and weaponized against Goldwater,
I remember some smart folks, particularly a scientist guest on NPR, saying that the benighted Western practice of getting our meat primarily from only three or four different animals, and most of the rest from less than a handful more, puts our food supply at risk, and was bad for the environment, or some such shit. Turns out there’s also a drawback to the Chinese practice of eating anything that squirms.
William said,
"Why is the hive mind uniquely associated with Nazi Germany? Why not the hive mind in Bolshevik Russia or Red Guard China? The left have a good record when it comes to Nazi Germany, but their record with other totalitarian states is not so good. The Germany Communist Party were opposed to Hitler."
I didn't say the hive mind was uniquely associated with Nazi Germany.
Bolshevik Russia and Red Guard China are also examples of the hive mind running things.
I question whether the Left has a good record when it comes to Nazi Germany.
First of all you are accepting the Left's narrative that the Nazis were not socialist.
But second, even if we were to believe that the Nazis were right wing, whatever definition we have to give to right wing to mean that, then the left still doesn't come out looking to good.
Who do you think voted for the Nazis?
It wasn't the communists (20% of the voters), that much is true. But the Center Party (catholic conservatives) and other smaller conservative and regional parties mostly held on to their voters. The big change was the percentage of the population that for voted for the Socialists and the Nazis.
In the prior election the Socialists had been the largest party, with some 40% of the vote (I'd have to check for the actual number) and the Nazis were marginal. Then the two parties switched places in relative percentages. So doesn't that imply that a great many voters for the Nazis had to have previously voted for the Socialists?
And although the Communists were consistent in their opposition to the Nazis in the mid-30s by the end of that decade they were allies, or at least Moscow was. (But if we are honest in remembering the past it was Communists all over the world including the United States).
stalin thought the Nazis were the easiest party to beat, the experience in Italy should have told him otherwise, so he targeted the social democrats, the catholic center party, which became the Christian democrats after the war, were a nonentity
"First of all you are accepting the Left's narrative that the Nazis were not socialist."
Which is kind of a stretch, given that NAZI was short for National Socialist. As I recall, Hitler contrasted his Nazi ideology with the Bolsheviks' International Socialist ideology. He wanted socialism for Germans, not socialism for everyone. So I suppose that is why the Lefties think Trump is Just Like Hitler. He recognizes that the Brotherhood of Man is a few genes short of biological reality.
No, I haven't eaten a bat. But is it that much worse than eating a duck?
Why Do Bats Carry So Many Dangerous Diseases?
John Lukacs argues that Hitler was the most successful politician of the 20th century--in the sense that he was able to mobilize across sectors and age groups of the population in a way few others could-- and his model, an actual melding of some socialism with fervent nationalism, was the one almost every subsequent wannabe dictator tried to follow.
Left and Right are really not that useful as categories for some situations.
Narr
The Hinge of the 20th C was Red Fascism vs Black Fascism
@mandrewa: Thanks for a well informed response. I guess the Nazis were the only socialist movement that the left opposed. I knew there had to be one....There was a lot of socialism in the Nazi make up, but their brand was racial supremacy and nationalism. It's easier to put them on the right than on the left....I did read somewhere that after the German Communist leaders fled to Russia, the ordinary working class communist members found no difficulty in transferring their allegiance to the Nazis and in being accepted by them.....Easter side note: In the way that Christians believe that the Last Judgment will happen in Israel, Marxists believed that the true communist revolution would happen in Germany.
If Hitler had confiscated the Krupps Arms works and left the Jewish department store owners alone, he would have been widely celebrated for wisdom greater than Lenin, but then he wouldn't have been Hitler.
William said...
@mandrewa: Thanks for a well informed response. I guess the Nazis were the only socialist movement that the left opposed.
Who do you mean by the left, William? If you mean American left, they were all in on German National Socialism.
Until Hitler invaded Russia. Then they had to choose and they chose the mass murderer.
Stalin had murdered scores of millions by that point. Hitler hadn't started.
The progressives, including some in fdr's cabinet loved Mussolini's Facism. It was every progressives wet dream. Mussolini made govt work.
If he hadn't thrown in with the Germans he'd still be idolized in the us today. His Fascist platform and ideology certainly are. (just don't mention the f word)
And don't get me started on Phil LaFollette and his National Progressive Party of the late 30s.
John Henry
“There's a large body of opinion to the effect that it's crazy to eat pork, or shellfish.”
Yes. Not quite the same body of evidence though.
I am not making fun of another culture. I am saying that their eating habits (and food preparation habits) are dangerous. It is not provincial chauvinism to point out that eating an animal known to harbor dangerous viruses that can spread to humans is an unwise thing to do.
...
The reason I really dislike this cheap, parochial chauvinism is that the problem isn't that the Chinese were eating bats, or cats, or dogs, or pangolins per se. It is that they were buying and selling them in grossly unsanitary markets that seemed design d to encourage the transmission of disease between species.
In a world where Cazjer Mazu, Balut and Lutefisk are regional delicacies, making fun of another culture's cuisine seems petty.
Yes, this is what happens when you move between cultures. The phrase "wet market" merely refers, in the absolute, to the place where you buy fresh food, as opposed to the dry market, which has stuff in cans and jars and sacks. The wet market is full of vegetables. Meat, and the problematic meat, is only a part of it. A nice one would seem like our farmer's markets here.
The problems with the wet market are, if I'm keeping track correctly, fourfold:
A. Hygiene in terms of refrigeration, sanitation, running water, drainage, killing and butchering animals on the floor, slaughtering the next one in a pool of the last one's gore;
B. Promiscuity of live species biting each other and employees/patrons, soiling each other's cages, sharing food and water, and virii/bacteria;
C. Reliance on what the British like to call the bushmeat trade, or wild animals from anywhere with no controls, whether for price, taste, tradition, availability;
D. Reliance on high-value exotic species for the promotion of TCM-Traditional Chinese Medicine; mostly for Chinese sexual vigor, like the pangolin scales or rhino horn.
A-D (and other) issues can perhaps be remedied short of wiping out all farmer's markets and replacing them with suburban style supermarkets. If that's not the focus, China will be happy to allow bushmeat, TCM, filth, etc., run out of 75,000 sqft megaplexes.
Oh and E, the driver behind much if it is that many Asian societies (this is not China alone; think Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and others) are low trust societies.
The reason that Peking duck features tableside service of a whole animal, or the BBQ joints with the hanging chickens and ducks, the reason they like whole fish with the heads on, is so you know you're getting chicken or duck or bass or pork, and not cat or rat or dog or bat.
Sell you a pound of some red meat in cellophane and you take it home ten miles away on foot? Then you get home and it's half melamine and half food coloring? No thanks, they need to see, smell, maybe feel, what that portion of flesh came from.
Wet markets are real solutions to real problems. The solution is not some indiscriminate ban on something we don't understand or care about to make the bad things go away. Certainly not without a notion of how to augment or replace it.
Ultimately what they need is an FDA, and/or a Consumer Reports. They may not be ready yet.
bagoh20 said...
"Maher is schizo."
Maher is a stopped clock.
Please don't hate the bat, hate the oppressive communist government in China that leads the population to have to eat wild bat that is prepared in an unsanitary fashion. Bats eat bugs, pollinate plants, immensely embiggening and embettering the world. Chinese people are wonderful. Loss of the 90,000,000 members of the Chinese Communist Party from the world would eventually lead to an annual celebration bigger than Earth Day, May Day, Fourth of July, and Christmas rolled into one.
"The reason I really dislike this cheap, parochial chauvinism is that the problem isn't that the Chinese were eating bats, or cats, or dogs, or pangolins per se" }}}}
The problem IS the bats, though. They have a unique biology that makes them living, seething cauldrons of new viruses; they don't die from them whereas any other mammal would.
I mean, they're cute as shit and I enjoy watching them dart around at dusk but humans are well-advised to stay far away from our batty friends.
gilbar wow that Patty Loveless song
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